Züssow – Wolgast Hafen railway line
| Züssow – Wolgast harbor | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route number : | 6772 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course book section (DB) : | 193 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 20.2 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route class : | C4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top speed: | 100 km / h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Züssow – Wolgast Hafen railway is a single-track, non- electrified branch line in the northeast of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . It branches off the main line Berlin – Stralsund at Züssow and heads northeast to the island of Usedom . In Wolgast , the railway ended at the Peene harbor until 2000; since then, it has led to the Heringsdorf route over the Peene River to the island.
The owner is the Usedomer Bäderbahn , and the operator is DB Regio Nordost , which runs between Świnoujście (Świnoujście) and Stralsund with class 646 railcars . In Züssow there is a connection to intercity or regional express trains to Berlin and to the regional express to Stralsund.
Operation and history
The line was opened on November 1, 1863 as one of the first railway lines in Western Pomerania, together with the Anklam - Stralsund section of the Angermünde-Stralsund Railway. The operator and owner of both connections was the Berlin-Stettiner Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BStE), which was incorporated into the Prussian State Railways in 1880 .
The 20 km long route branches off from the main line in Züssow. Although it branches off towards the south, the route is kilometers from Berlin , as was common at the time for most of the routes branching off the main BStE route.
Until 1876, the railway was the only rail route in the direction of Usedom. After the opening of the line from Ducherow to Swinoujscie (today Świnoujście ), traffic shifted from Berlin to the new line. Nevertheless, in the beginning of the 20th century there was a lot of excursion traffic, which was handled with five pairs of trains every day. From 1896 to 1927 a branch line of the Anklam-Lassaner small railway with 600 mm gauge connected the Buddenhagen station directly with Anklam, which was mainly used for goods transport. In 1898 the facilities in Wolgast were expanded and a branch to Kröslin was set up. For the transport of fish from the port of Kröslin, the eight kilometer long line was set up as a four-rail track together with the 750 millimeter narrow-gauge line of the Greifswald-Wolgast small railway company . Furthermore, in Karlsburg there was a field railway between the manor and the stop.
After the Karnin lift bridge was blown up in April 1945 and the subsequent closure of the Swinoujscie line, the Wolgast line again became the only rail route to the island. Accordingly, the traffic on the train increased.
The narrow-gauge railway to Greifswald was shut down after the war for reparation purposes, but the standard-gauge track to Kröslin was retained for passenger and freight traffic, which ended in 1963 and 1965 respectively. In Wolgast, trips to an industrial park in the north of the city were still carried out until the fall of the Wall.
In the absence of a continuous rail connection, the passengers had to change trains in Wolgast and walk to the island, from where the Inselbahn took them to Heringsdorf . Only a few through wagons from special trains, but mainly freight wagons, were transported directly to the island by rail ferry . This traffic did not end until the end of the 1980s when the Stralsund ferry had to be shut down for technical reasons.
Until 1989, the line was electrified with a single catenary . Now double-deck cars were used , which were pulled by class 242 and 243 electric locomotives . In addition, only in the summer season five pairs of D-trains ran from Wolgast Hafen in the direction of Berlin and on to Leipzig, Zwickau or Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz).
In 1999, Deutsche Bahn AG handed the route over to its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Usedomer Bäderbahn (UBB), which began to expand the route. A year later, the railway was connected to the island route via the newly built Wolgast bridge , which made it possible for the first time to have continuous traffic to the mainland and thus to Berlin or Stralsund. In the same year, the use of class 646 railcars began, which run every hour, from Wolgast to Świnoujście every half hour in summer. The rehabilitation of the line was completed in 2004. Since then, the maximum speed has been 100 km / h. During the expansion, the UBB removed the overhead lines , as the use of electric multiple units or locomotives is no longer intended.
literature
- Rudi Buchweitz: The branch lines of the Berlin-Szczecin Railway . VBN Verlag Bernd Neddermeyer, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-941712-26-3 .